martin amis as muhammad atta (and also a thread about sept. 11th art)

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

it's in the new new yorker.

i guess he gets points for something. trying? or maybe just for demonstrating the uselessness of sept. 11th fiction. i just wish we didn't have to sit through everyone's sept. 11th statement. amis' thing feels like his usual cocksmanship, "oh yeah well i'll just be muhammad atta, how bout that?"

which, i guess, is a sort of hopeful thing in a way. if sept. 11th is just another proving ground for egomaniacal artists then the terrorists haven't won, hooray. not like anyone ever thought the terrorists were going to win. but anyway. sept. 11th seems to me unlikely to ever produce much by way of great art, literature, architecture, or great much of anything. i guess that john adams piece is ok. and the ilx/ysi tribute was pretty funny.

what we really need is a "9/11 idol" thingy, where all the important writers and artists and everybody could compete and simon cowell could sneer at their pretensions. and the winner would get to live in the penthouse of the freedom tower.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 04:29 (twenty years ago)

don't mind me. i'm just annoyed.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 04:30 (twenty years ago)

Although I generally agree with you on this (I shuddered at the "Flight 93" trailer last weekend)...

not like anyone ever thought the terrorists were going to win.

so said Nicholas II. They've managed to set off the Bush/neocon lunacy. Who knows where that will lead?

― someone let this mitya out! (mitya), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 06:43 (twenty years ago)

i remember when bruce springsteen played a couple of 9/11-relevant songs on that "fallen heroes" special or whatever it was called, greil marcus wrote a column saying that it would have been a way bigger and more impressive/shocking/original statement if springsteen had just stepped forward and said that, for the moment, he had nothing to say. i feel that way about every song or story i've seen that tries to make some sort of statement about the subject - somehow, it just doesn't work. the moment doesn't translate well into art.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 07:50 (twenty years ago)

i'm psyched about the greengrass film. of *course* it should be an action movie, ffs.

― 25 yr old slacker cokehead (Enrique), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 08:08 (twenty years ago)

Pearl Harbor and Titantic demonstrate clearly that American tragedy makes for bad American art.

― Fluffy Bear (Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 12:27 (twenty years ago)

The Civil War? The Great Depression?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 12:29 (twenty years ago)

wouldn't say titanic was an american disaster

crosspost

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 12:31 (twenty years ago)

it would have been a way bigger and more impressive/shocking/original statement if springsteen had just stepped forward and said that, for the moment, he had nothing to say

I'm not sure I understand the reason there. Would it've been better if he'd got up and said, "Here's a preview from my new record, More Songs about Mustangs and Barbecue"? Fwiw, I kinda love The Rising, but there's plenty of mustang and bbq on that, too.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 12:45 (twenty years ago)

i'm not too big a fan of the rising, apart from a few songs. it's just too dutiful. but at least it doesn't feel self-congratulatory the way the amis story does.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:06 (twenty years ago)

if you're anti-9/11-art aren't pretty much anti-art overall?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:07 (twenty years ago)

art spiegelman's 9/11 book is pretty good, partly because a lot of it is about the inability to say anything meaningful.

xpost: elaborate, plz.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:08 (twenty years ago)

i mean if art isn't allowed to deal with big important scary stuff then what's the fucking point of art at all except as a trivial diversion

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:08 (twenty years ago)

word.

― 25 yr old slacker cokehead (Enrique), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:10 (twenty years ago)

Not anti-9/11 art as much as I am anti-shit.

― Jimmy Mod: My theme is DEATH (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:11 (twenty years ago)

not that it's not allowed, just that when it sets out consciously to do so it often trips on itself. not always, obviously. (guernica, war and peace, night, etc. etc.) it's just that it almost seems obligatory, everyone does their 9/11 book or story or movie or record. (actually, 25 hours didn't do a bad job with it, because it didn't take it head on, just had it hovering abyss-like in the background.)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:11 (twenty years ago)

25th hour, i mean

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:12 (twenty years ago)

well 9/11 is something that affected a lot of people, including artists, why shouldn't they all respond to it? and to be honest i'm really not seeing "everybody" rocking 9/11 art all over the place. if anything, quite the opposite

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:13 (twenty years ago)

well 9/11 is something that affected a lot of people, including artists, why shouldn't they all respond to it?

as with anything they should; and they should be ready for ppl to not buy it (Flight 93) or rip it to shreds (as some of us seem to be doing with this). cream will always rise, and when the great 9/11 statement is made, WE WILL KNOW because we will embrace it. In the meantime, we judge.

― Jimmy Mod: My theme is DEATH (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:17 (twenty years ago)

it's emerging in bits and pieces, but by the end of the decade i doubt there'll be many serious artists (or even many unserious ones) who haven't done something with it.

and yeah, it affected a lot of people. it arguably affected everyone. but it doesn't follow from there that everyone's going to have something profound or interesting to say about it. what bugged me about the martin amis story is it felt kind of stuntlike, a highwire act. i understand the attraction of that for an artist, and i could tell he did his research, but it didn't work (imo). and in not working, i felt like it left atta even more distant than before.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:18 (twenty years ago)

it arguably affected everyone

Very arguably

― TS: Mick Ralphs vs. Ariel Bender (Dada), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:18 (twenty years ago)

then are you not liking it bcuz it didn't work or because it didn't work wrt the subject?

― Jimmy Mod: My theme is DEATH (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:19 (twenty years ago)

ie it can fail on a technical level, but succeed in terms of subject. it can fail the subject but still be technically good.

― Jimmy Mod: My theme is DEATH (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:20 (twenty years ago)

as i would say the rising failed artistically becauuse it's a lousy springsteen album.

― Jimmy Mod: My theme is DEATH (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:22 (twenty years ago)

ehh. i'm not sure it works on either level. i mean, the writing's good, you know, amis can write. but its construction is too obvious. (it does that thing of repeating the first paragraph as the last paragraph, which i used to do sometimes until an editor told me to cut it out.) the neatness of the construction is at odds with the story, and not even in a way that feels deliberate.

but i dunno. maybe someone else -- a bigger amis fan than me -- will read it and love it.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:23 (twenty years ago)

i totally agree, i'm not arguing against judging these works on their own merits, but against the idea that artists shouldn't deal with 9/11 at all. and i don't really agree with gypsy mothra's assertion that artists are falling all over themselves to do that.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:24 (twenty years ago)

CONSENSUS REACHED. LOCK THREAD

― Jimmy Mod: My theme is DEATH (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:24 (twenty years ago)

i think a lot of artists feel obligated to deal with it, either out of some sense of civic responsibility (like bruce) or for the challenge (like amis) or out of some kind of artistic keeping-up-with-the-joneses. and i never said no one should do it. just that obligatory art tends to feel obligatory.

xpost: TOO LATE!

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:27 (twenty years ago)

CONSENSUS... SHATTERED...

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:28 (twenty years ago)

if amis was playing muhammad atta in a film (or a sitcom, maybe), that would be cool

― 25 yr old slacker cokehead (Enrique), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:32 (twenty years ago)

"atta boy" wednesday at 8:30 eastern

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:34 (twenty years ago)

does amis do a 'time's arrow' with this one?

― 25 yr old slacker cokehead (Enrique), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:36 (twenty years ago)

does amis do a 'time's arrow' with this one?

nah, except for recycling the first paragraph. which is possibly meant to suggest that the story isn't what happened but atta imagining what's going to happen? i don't know.

also, i know michael moore has lots of detractors even around here, but i still think the couple of minutes of 9/11 stuff in fahrenheit 9/11 was pretty effective -- the black screen with audio, and then just the reactions on people's faces. it was telling that right-wingers criticized him for not showing the explosions and the collapsing buildings. but i think moore understood that we've seen it too many times, it's been reduced to iconography (as on a lot of right-wing websites, which run clips of it fetishistically). there are some really good bits of filmmaking in that movie.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:44 (twenty years ago)

it's not the lack of specifically 9.11 fic but the lack of war-on-terror/iraq fic, or at least the absence of them in fic/films/tv/etc.

― 25 yr old slacker cokehead (Enrique), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:46 (twenty years ago)

it's the lack of 9/11 content in fan fiction that really bothers me.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 14:47 (twenty years ago)

ihttp://www.authentichistory.com/images/attackonamerica/comics/spider-man_36_09.jpg

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 15:39 (twenty years ago)

"authentichistory.com"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 15:42 (twenty years ago)

All during that time, I kept waiting for Bruce to sing "41 Shots".

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 15:51 (twenty years ago)

that would be a "way more impressive/shocking/original statement" in any context really

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 15:53 (twenty years ago)

For some sick reason, that song "Leaving On a Jet Plane" keeps going thru my head

― TS: Mick Ralphs vs. Ariel Bender (Dada), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 15:55 (twenty years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.